The March update for EVE Online is upon us today, and with it comes a pretty long list of updates and changes.

Where do I even start? The list this month is so long!

For openers, there is a new event in The Agency called The Hunt.

Fatal and The Rabbit’s turn to be loot pinatas

This seems to fall into the now standard pattern of events from The Agency; find a site, warp in, kill NPCs, collect loot, earn points. The twist here is that you need to harden up against and shoot kinetic and thermal ammo.

For those using capitals, jump bridges, and back ops bridges, there has been a reduction in jump fatigue.

Having both jump fatigue and range restrictions dropped on us with the Phoebe release about three and a half years back felt like a bit of a double whammy. From my personal perspective I went from being able to do a series of 12ly jumps in my Archon to just a 5ly jump and an accompanying wait which increased with each subsequent jump. It had to be done. Capital travel was too easy. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t feel like a hit, and doubly so when I had to make my way from Saranen down to Delve.

That has been dialed back some in the past and is being dialed back even more with the current update, as detailed in this dev blog. Jump fatigue will now be capped at 4 hours, down from five days, with the jump timer being similarly brought down from a maximum of 9.6 hours to just 30 minutes. No longer will this be seen:

The old jump fatigue maximum

We will see what that means for capitals and jump bridges and the like. People will hopefully feel more free to go on ops as the participation requirement of “no jump fatigue!” fades away.

There is also a change to tethering. When you jump in to a cyno on a citadel you won’t tether immediately. There will be a cool down during which you will be vulnerable.

That dev blog also includes changes to entosis operations related to sovereignty warfare. We shall see if that makes trying to take space more common or not. Right now you can sit back and build up ISK and material in a single region if you’re willing to care bear it, so grabbing more space or trying to upgrade your own space isn’t much of a motivator anymore. It isn’t like the old days where the CFC took Fountain because of moons.

There has also been a balance pass for ships. Tech I battleships get a boost to lock range and cargo space, the Oracle, Naga, Talos, and Tornado can now fit MJDs, and the Ferox and the Machariel have been nerfed a bit while a few ships got buffs. We’ll see if this leads to Munin fleets or not.

Also part of that is the new FC ship, the Monitor.

The Monitor Flag Cruiser concept

Since it was brought up by CCP last month it has had the ability to fit a target painter and a probe launcher added (along with the ability to hold some probes) so FCs can scan down enemies and get on kill mails. We shall see if anybody ends up using this thing.

In addition today’s update spells the end for EVE Voice as well as a revamped chat system that features a back end on its own server.

And, finally, there is the Little Things update, where CCP has updated or improved a bunch of small items that should make capsuleers happy. There are quite a few on there that make me happy, especially being able to see the ship type of people broadcasting for reps.

Who is asking for reps?

It isn’t that logi doesn’t like you frigate pilots, but spending time locking you up to find you’re already dead or have zipped out of range is annoying. Logi has bigger ships to protect.

So that is what I have to report. The update has gone live and further details can be found in the Patch Notes and on the Updates page.

Addendum: The game is down while they look into issues that may have come from the new chat system. The whole thing was troublesome enough during the first mass test that I am surprised that they didn’t push it off to a future release. This may be a rocky launch. It is a good thing we all have a skill queue now.

Addendum 2: According to the forum thread the game is up as of 19:00 UTC, but there are still issues:

CRITICAL ISSUES:

CHAT SYSTEM:

THERE IS CURRENTLY A DELAY OF UP TO 10 MINUTES FOR UPDATES TO LOCAL CHAT
OTHER CHAT CHANNELS ARE ALSO AFFECTED BY SUBSTANTIAL LATENCY
WE ARE CURRENTLY WORKING ON A SOLUTION TO THIS WHILE TQ REMAINS ONLINE

BOUNTY SYSTEM:

WE ARE AWARE THAT BOUNTY TICKS ARE CURRENTLY NOT BEING PAID OUT
ALL NPCS THAT ARE BEING KILLED ARE BEING LOGGED
A FIX FOR THIS IS CURRENTLY BEING WORKED ON
MISSED WALLET TICKS WILL BE REIMBURSED IN THE COMING DAYS WHEN A FIX IS IN PLACE

Addendum 3 – The bounty system has been fixed and now pays out correctly. Those who did not get paid today should see a payout in the coming days. Chat, however, is still not working as expected. When I logged in earlier, Jita was silent.

Addendum 4 – A final summing up of events by CCP Falcon.